Go bears!

Go bears!

Time is NOT flying

Boinc me

I have been participating in the World Community Grid for a couple years, and I am currently ranked #4200 out of approximately 400,000 participants. Yes, I have a freakish addiction to my WCG standing, and it is the absolute first thing I check on the computer each morning.

I am constantly amazed by the lack of success of this form of grid computing. With the millions of dual-core PCs floating around, shouldn't all the ills of the world be computationally solved by now? Go download a copy of BOINC and see if you can catch me!

Not in stock

I was traveling on business this past week and myself and several colleagues went out for drinks and dinner after work. We chose a snazzy new restaurant, so new in fact that it was opening night.

When we arrived, I examined the drinks menu and decided on a Tecate, the second-best liquor from Mexico (after Monte Alban). Oops, not in stock yet, its opening night after all. So I settled for something called a Landshark. Cute name, bad beer as it turns out. After forcing down the Landcrap, I decided I should switch to Scotch and a colleague recommended Oban from the list. Oops, not in stock yet, its opening night after all. So I settled for a Macallan.

This horrible selection experience spurred me into action and upon arrival home, I promptly bought both Tecate and Oban. The Tecate is of course already drunk and gone back to nature, but I have not yet cracked the Oban, as three fingers of the BenRiach remain. The BenRiach was an interesting buy, being finished in tawny port hogsheads to add flavor. I did not actually detect the taste of any hogs heads, so that phrase-ology must mean something other than the obvious. It did have a very rich, powerful taste, although my un-educated palate was not able to break it out into the "Butterscotch, herbs, cinnamon, peaches and sultanas, infused with rich port and oak wood notes" which it was purported to exhibit.

The Oban should be a nice drink. Its hard not to be attracted to a scotch whose main draw is the fact that old dead Celts were found beneath the distillery.

In case it seems like all I do is drink....

There is like one tiny swig of the Caol Ila left. No offense to the distiller, but I didn''t like this scotch at all. I've noticed it recently popping up in bars...its like the GM fleet cars of whisky. So the bushes in my backyard might enjoy that last swig.

BenRiach is my next bottle. Supposedly finished in tawny port kegs with an amazing finish. Jury's out till I guzzle it down...

Oh I shed a tear as I sipped down the last of the Longmorn. This was quite simply a fantastic scotch, second (or third) only to JW Blue and Aberlour 18.

On a seperate but related note, Northwestern published an updated schedule for football and times are starting to fill in for the games. The best road trip of the year looks like Minnesota which is a blast of a party town (they have scotch there) and the stadium is walking distance from the downtown district.

I attended the annual Spring Game yesterday in Evanston. I was surprised by the crowd, which might have numbered around 3,000 in total for the scrimmage and pre-game festivities. While that doesn't compare to the 73,000 which Penn State drew, its impressive as we had expectations of being the only fans there. Instead, we found a lively tail gate crowd in the West lot, already partying when we arrived at 8:45 AM. Enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by the cold temperatures and gusty winds, but the Heineken mini-keg (the greatest invention of all-time) kept us warmed and by game time the sun was out and the temperatures reached 60 or so.

The post-game ritual of beer and brats was followed by a pit stop at UBAA, a nice little bar a few miles from the stadium which is known mostly for being next door to the parking lot where the Fish Head's brother lay prone vomiting up Knob Creek after a game last year.

Long morning till Longmorn

The Scotch Blog votes this the most under-rated whisky and adds "Most of the Longmorn produced is destined for blends such as Chivas Regal. Chivas Brothers do very little to promote this gem - which is a real shame, as aficionados consider this to be one of the very best Speyside single malts.
Complex, smooth and elegant - and surprisingly reasonably priced - when you can find it."

Well I found it and its pretty damn good.

Holy mackerel

A good friend from work was nice enough to coordinate a a side trip to Wrigley, including a beautiful box seat which he graciously funded. Good news: Cubs pummelled the Reds. Bad news: I was unable to attend.

The Cubs are off to a good start this year, and there is hope for October as the recent quake opened a hole in the earth and swallowed the curse goat.

Spring game

I always mean to drive up to Evanston to catch the Spring Game, but I have never once made it. This year, I can spare myself the recriminations as this glorified scrimmage-which-serves-no-purpose will be streamed live off BigTenNetwork.com. Yes, that same Big Ten Network which has been battling with Comcast for many months. Yes, that same Big Ten Network which I cannot see on my TV. Yes, that one, the one we love to hate.

old boring dead soldier

I bought this one a couple days ago but it didn't last long. Work has been pretty crappy lately, so I have been closing out my workdays with a couple stiff ones, and since I normally have a couple stiff ones during the workday, I am whizzing thru the bottles faster than normal.

This particular brand, Glen Garioch, had sort of a light, sweet taste, and I did not particularly care for it. I guess that is what Japanese (Suntory) ownership does for a scotch...come to think of it, it had a vaguely sake-like taste to it.

Go Hawks!

My friend Paul organized a little outing to see the Chicago Blackhawks. I used to be a big hockey fan, and myself and brothers and friends used to play ice hockey at the local pond every weekend during the winter. But somewhere along the line, the Hawks became famous for being fan-unfriendly and I lost the taste for the game.

But I was impressed by the energy at the United Center, and the fans were rabid and excited as the Hawks routed the Capitals 5-0. Tony Esposito, world-famous goalie, was the guest of honor and was greeted by his brother Phil, world-famous center. Tony was (and obviously still is) a huge fan favorite.

In addition to a great game, we also had beers and a cheezborger at Billy Goat's which is only a few blocks from the UC. Post-game we hit the Third Rail which was full of young urbanites who seemed primarily focused on sexual relations with members of whatever sex interested them, which baffled me as I concentrated on the giant glass of scotch which I was served.

I ate it

Yes, I ate the Sheep Dip. Despite the name, I found it to be very good, easily better than the usual mass-market Glenlivet or Glenfiddich. Next up is Caol Ila, which i have never had but which is purported to have a light and interesting taste to it.

Spring is sprung, and the long darkenss is over

Each year, an exciting event occurs which heralds the end of the dark cold winter, and signals a renewal of hope and life for all.

Go Cats!

Eponymous

From Wiktionary:

"Of, relating to, or being the person after which something is named"

One might ask what marketing genius came up with this....but let's not go there.

Weather

The weather in Chicago today: Partly sunny, -1 Farenheit, 35 mile-per-hour winds, windchill of -24 Farenheit.

The weather in Mesa today: Partly sunny, +48 Farenheit, windchill of +44 Farenheit.

A bad omen

In his previous position, neophyte head coach Pat Fitzgerald was also the recruiting coordinator for the Wildcats. Maybe he needs to go back to that, as the recruiting rankings issued today show the Cats tied for 72nd (with Troy!). Big Ten teams that did worse? Indiana. Yea, that's it, our recruiting class was second-to-last in the conference. And no, that does not make me feel good about burning a bunch of dough on season tickets. Click a link or two and venture over to Hail to Purple to see if they are more optimistic...but look at it this way. Would you prefer to have a good record or a good recruiting class? We know which Charlie Weis has!

Busted

Detective Pescado Cabeza reports that the Clarendon Hills police have apprehended the notorious two-bit gambling criminal known as The Commish. The booking picture is particularly embarrassing but there it is.

What people do on the Internet

Ever wonder what people spend so many hours doing on the Internet? Of course I can only answer that from my limited perspective. For me, I read the Scotch blog, order cigars, surf for porn, and of course read the sports. My kids do AIM, My Space, and surf for porn. What do other people do? Well....all I can tell you is what I see in my hit counter. Here is what people have recently google'd which caused them to land at Fish Head.

As you can see, my reference to the literary giant Dick, yielded many hits. Now what does this mean? Is Mr. Dick's work (and his freaky android head) really that popular? Or is it more likely that dickbot is code word for some porno stuff? Let's keep going. What might you guess was being searched for by the lonely soul who google'd on "purdue coeds"? Dude, I've been to Purdue games and they are not really very cute. And what freak searched for "toxoplasmosis libido"?

This could go on and on. Darts anyone? Who associates darts with porn? Apparently the British do, as after casually mentioning darts in a post, Fish Head was repeatedly hit from various UK locations with various and sundry hits searching on darts.

Lastly, we have the browser challenged individual who apparently doesn't understand what a bookmark is, and is thus forced to repetitively find my blog by searching on "fishheadonastick". Maybe he could buy a copy of Internet for Dummies and learn how to use a browser.

This was absolutely not mine!

Because of course I would get the one with the long lasting batteries :-)